FW: Skiing blind - Day 38

Distance so far - 746km
Distance to Pole - 394km

I have been looking at my ski tips for 8 hours and 10 minutes non stop today, its the only way to ease the feeling of vertigo. I feel queasy, disorientated and unbalanced. Its hard to stay upright, not that I really know which way upright is, I'm always throwing a pole out to the side to stop myself from falling. This is what skiing in a total 'white out' is like, you can't tell the difference between the air or the ground, like walking in really thick fog, this is the worst we have had in 38 days and we have had no contrast visibility now for more or less 12 days straight - very unusual for this time of year.

So all I can see are the red tips of my skis, and the wind is blowing snow across them at a specific angle based on the direction I'm heading in. I'm trying to walk on a bearing of 121 degrees towards our food cache, but in a whiteout it is practically impossible to walk in a straight line, so I'm using the direction of the wind to help me. When I'm on course the wind blown snow crosses my skis from left to right, if it comes in at 8 o'clock and leaves at 2 o'clock them I'm more or less on the right heading. If it comes in at 9, then I have turned into wind and I'm heading too far North, if the snowflakes cross my skis at 7 o'clock then I've turned too far South. As a double check I have a hole in the zip on the left hand side of my salopettes, if my knee is cold from the draught then I'm on course, if suddenly my shin and calf get chilly, I'm off course and the same with my thigh and buttock.

Its amazing when relieved of one of your senses how you can retune others to work for you, its too cold to use a GPS all the time and to read a compass accurately means stopping every 10 ski strides, which means we would be moving too slowly. For the whole day I have looked at the tips of my skis (actually for most of the last 12 days) my mind is exhausted, concentrating on things to distract me from this featureless monotony.

Then in the last 10 minutes of the final march of the day, I ask Clare who is behind me to call out left or right should I stray too far off course (not very effective way to navigate long term) I'm going to ski the last part of the day with my eyes closed! I also asked her to shout if she sees a crevasse. So for 10 minutes, I led a group of skeletons across the most remote place on earth, with my eyes closed, it was bliss, the vertigo vanished and for the first time today I felt calm and relaxed, skiing in total darkness towards the Pole.